The Italy that is an exception is not really a big news. It is therefore not surprising that in all European countries, except Italy, average annual wages have increased. Despite the pandemic that has had important effects on the world of work, creating more unemployment and exacerbating socio-economic inequalities even more. “According to the International Labor Organization, the pandemic has put workers to the test and worsened their living conditions all over the world. In Europe, too, many jobs have been lost and the number of hours worked on average has declined, especially in the low-paid professions. On average in 2020 the wage bill, by which we mean the total non-standardized gross wages, in fact decreased compared to the previous year », the experts of the Openpolis foundation wrote in a recent report. To be precise, 6.5% of wages were lost in Europe between before and after the pandemic. “The cause of this phenomenon was, in particular, the cut in working hours, while the problem of job loss was largely stemmed by safeguards at national level, which managed to contain the most negative effects. This in Italy has materialized with the blocking of layoffs, in force from February 2020 to the end of June 2021 », the experts write.
The wage loss was also limited thanks to state measures. In particular, the subsidies, implemented by most European countries, would have halved the impact of the crisis according to the ILO, bringing the actual loss to -3.1% (compared to the initial -6.5%).
The data
" In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, the average annual salary of a Luxembourg citizen was double that of a Greek, and almost three times that of a Slovak - reads the Openpolis report - In general, to have average wages the highest are the countries of north-western Europe (Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark), while the lowest are the member states of central Europe (Slovakia and Hungary) and southern Europe (Greece and Portugal) ».
